On Saturday October 26, 2019, Emmanuel Music under Artistic Director Ryan Turner opens its 49th season with Johann Sebastian Bach’s titanic Mass in B Minor. A musical setting of the complete Ordinary of the Latin Mass, it is one of the composer’s last completed works, finished the year before his death. Much of the Mass reexamines and repurposes music from nearly 35 years of Bach’s compositional output. Turner says, “This is second only to the St. Matthew Passion as the most monumental piece in Western musical history. It’s like Bach’s curriculum vitae, a compendium of every compositional technique he ever used. But at the same time, it has enormous depth and musical sincerity that completely serve the music.” This season-opening concert at Boston’s historic Emmanuel Church marks Emmanuel Music’s first performance of the Mass in B Minor since 2011.